As the use of surveillance cameras by law enforcement agencies has continued to grow in the fight against crime and terrorism, several problems have been recognized by those tasked to gather video data. Among these problems are inaccuracies in the metadata, particularly, the time of day, and/or the calendar day, that is recorded with the camera surveillance video.
Such errors can easily occur in cameras that still rely on manually set dates and times, and which may have been inaccurately entered. Moreover, even cameras which were initialized manually with accurate calendar day and time entries, or even those which were initialized automatically by synchronizing with satellite data may have failed to properly reset after a power outage or may be “off” due to errors that may occur due to daylight savings time cycles. As a result, such metadata may not accurately represent the date and time when the surveillance footage of a crime scene, for example, was actually recorded.
For example, an investigator wishes to view surveillance video on a camera that could have captured an event of interest. Upon inspecting the camera of interest, the investigator finds that, although the current date and time is actually 3:09 PM, Mar. 11, 2016, the video the camera is currently recording is time-stamped as 10:17 PM, Mar. 9, 2016. The time on the camera is off by one day, plus 16 hours and 52 minutes. The investigator would need to correct for this error to correctly locate the recorded footage on the camera corresponding to the actual time the event occurred. If, for example, an incident occurred on Mar. 3, 2016 at 12:11 PM, the investigator would need to turn this camera to Mar. 1, 2016 at 7:19 PM to view the incident (if captured) on this camera.
Such calculations involving date and time, however, are difficult and time consuming, lend themselves to human error. In particular, they are performed over and over again for the same camera on each occasion the camera is examined by an investigator, and on multiple cameras during an investigation, that need to be cued to the same actual date and time. This is extremely time-consuming, subject to human error, and can lead to questions about the veracity of the video evidence acquired. There is a particular need, therefore, for investigators to quickly locate and obtain footage from any camera that may have captured relevant information, which can then be accurately and quickly synchronized to a time coinciding with an incident under investigation. In addition, because the camera footage and related information may become evidence at trial, it is also essential to document and track the acquisition and analysis of the camera footage, including documenting the basis and accuracy of the calculations to reliably authenticate the actual time that the camera footage corresponds to.
There is a need, therefore, for an incident time calculator to synchronize a camera's date and time metadata with actual, correct data to quickly locate video footage of interest, and to do so for a plurality of cameras that may capture relevant footage of a crime scene, for example.